Make More Money From Your Ideas

"What do you think about the risks of offering a payment scheme? It would generate more sales but be open to abuse from non payers (after I take the first payment)."

As a general rule, my attitude towards this sort of abuse is that you're better off helping the honest folks than worrying about the cheats.

After all, if you take ANY credit card order on-line, and the customer later disputes the transaction, the money will come out of your pocket. So even one-off payments are open to abuse.

So yes, I think a payment scheme is a good idea. Everybody I know who has offered a payment scheme and talked about it has reported positive results.

That said, I guess some payment schemes are better than others. If, for example, the customer authorises you to deduct instalments regularly from their credit card, that's ideal because it doesn't require their involvement. On the other hand, if you had to invoice them every month, there's more risk of it going wrong (even just due to laziness or incompetence, not dishonesty, on the customer's part).

Labels: e-commerce